All Considering

Anatma, no Soul, Buddha Nature, Vedantins vs Buddhism

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:14:39 +0000

One of the toughest aspects of Buddhism, from a metaphysical perspective, is the ‘no soul’, ‘anatma’ (or anatta) doctrine. Buddha didn’t mean that we’re soulless machines or anything like that. What he meant was that there is nothing permanent in our consciousness that could be identified as ‘me’. He went one step further too: our whole cyclic existence is the result of the false sense of ‘I’ that we all have. (*)

Modern psychology and neurology agree with the Buddha on this one. Looking at our brain activity, they can’t find a central governing spot in the brain. There isn’t some sort of ‘God’ neuron. Somehow the brain does a lot, but the sense of unity, of ‘I do this’ is an illusion the brain produces so that it can think it understands what it’s doing. Or something.

Does this mean we’re machines without will or choice? The answer should be (but apparently isn’t) obvious: no, we’re not machines. We were born of a mother and we’re sentient beings. We feel, we act, we dance, we laugh, we choose… And when we THINK we’re not in control, that we don’t have a choice, we become less ethical. So the very thought that we’re merely machines has an effect and is unhelpful.

Buddhist philosophy is helpful in this debate because it finds the precise middle ground: there IS a continuity of consciousness that moves from one life to the next (reincarnation, karma), but this continuity of consciousness is not as unchanging as it seems. In fact, it’s very unstable in content. In this sense it is very paradoxical, and that is a charge usually leveled against Buddhism. However, as I showed above this paradox is essential to consciousness anyhow, so we might as well go with it.

On the one hand there is something that appears as consciousness: that’s a universal human experience. Buddhism agrees with most other religious philosophies that this consciousness is somewhat independent of the body. I say ‘somewhat’ because it also recognizes that while we’re embodied, the body clearly does impact the manifest mind. When we get ill, our consciousness changes. In dementia the body stops supporting memory. However, that does not mean that consciousness has no existence without a body, as Near Death Experiences testify.

Let’s go one deeper: consciousness is defined in Gelugpa philosophy as always having an object. In other words: consciousness without an object is meaningless.

Since consciousness without an object is meaningless, beyond experience in fact, it’s not hard to see that consciousness always changes. What changes is after all the object of consciousness. One moment I’m angry, the next I’m doing my daily puja.
So far my explanation of anatma has been roughly in line with all Buddhist schools. Learn more

In fact, as long as we stick to ordinary consciousness, even most of Hinduism agrees: in Advaita Vedanta (the main Hindu school of philosophy) it is recognized that the personality changes all the time and that what reincarnates isn’t the personality, but Atma plus karma. Roughly.

This is where the conflict between Buddhism and Hinduism comes in: in Hindu thought it is not stressed that even Atma changes and many people do come to the conclusion that it is permanent in the sense of unchanging. See also this evaluation of Karma and Anatta in Hinduism and Buddhism. However, since the OBJECT of consciousness does evidently change, Atma is Brahman after all and Brahman as containing the manifest universe also changes, Atma itself must change. But that’s cheating: I’m applying (Gelugpa) Buddhist philosophy to Hindu thought.

Let’s get back to basics: The difference between ‘Buddha nature’ or ‘Buddha consciousness’ and Atman really isn’t that big. Both stress that we have a usually untapped source of universal wisdom inside of us. Mahayana Buddhists call this Buddha Nature. Hindu’s call this Atma. As I said the only difference, a difference essential to the philosophical difference between Hinduism and Buddhism, is that in Hinduism the changing nature of the continuity of consciousness is not stressed.

In both cases what it means in practical terms is that we have something Divine in us as potential and that we can awaken this through living ethically, meditation and contemplation. Whether this divine something changes or not may not be essential. Logically however, it does change, because the object of that consciousness (the universe) changes.

One of the basic meditations in the Discovering Buddhism program is the continuity of consciousness meditation. For Westerners it’s a basic meditation to help get a feel for reincarnation. When you do this meditation you’re tapping into the common Indian thread in Hinduism and Buddhism: the sense that consciousness doesn’t start with the body, nor ends with it’s death.

To recap:

From the Gelugpa Buddhist perspective two things are important

Consciousness continues as does karma, as in: ‘your’ continuity of consciousness will have to deal with the results of what ‘you’ do today.
Consciousness changes as does everything else.

The first point is pan-Indian. The second seems pretty obvious when put that simply, but when it becomes a deep down realization it is the basis of Buddhist enlightenment and extends all the way up to Buddha Nature.

(*) This is most famously described in the Buddha’s Second Sermon.

Terminology

Atma = The Divine Soul in Advaita Vedanta, one with Brahma. In theosophy the same. Atma can also be used in Sanskrit for ‘self’ or ‘I’.
Anatma = no-I (also anatta), the Buddhist doctrine that there is no permanent unchanging self. Derives from a broader use of the word ‘atma’ as self or personality.

Chittamatrin, LOA, Desire and The Path

Katinka - Spirituality — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:03:06 +0000

Overview of my posts online over the past month or so:
All Considering:

Contemporary Buddhism

Taking refuge: vows, commitments, belief and faith

Great Spiritual Books

Our experienced reality – aka Buddhism and The Secret

Katinka - Spirituality — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:48:30 +0000

Ever since I started teaching the topic of Buddhist Philosophy about ten years ago, I’ve used the Law of Attraction (aka The Secret) to explain the Chittamatrin view (*). However, there are important differences and that’s basically what this post is about.

Let’s start with the Dhammapada quote that is usually used to claim that the Buddha taught the Law of Attraction (source):

Mind is the forerunner or all actions;
All deeds are led by mind, created by mind.
If one speaks or acts with a corrupt mind,
Suffering follows, as wheels follow the hoof of an ox.

Mind is the forerunner of all actions;
All deeds are led by mind, created by mind.
If one speaks or acts with a serene mind,
Happiness follows as surely as one’s shadow.

Alright, I cheated: this is not quite the Dhammapada quote usually given to show that the Buddha taught The Secret. That’s because he really didn’t. The Buddha taught karma and while there are similarities to the Law of Attraction, the main conclusions are diametrically opposed.

So what do Tibetan Buddhists say about our experienced reality? They say the way we experience reality is a result of our own mind and our mind is itself a result of the karma of an infinite number of previous lives.

That’s Buddhism in general in fact, though I’m not sure all Buddhists would agree we’ve had an infinite number of previous lives: I suspect that’s specific to the Tibetan traditions.

How does that work? Well, say you’re visualizing abundance for yourself. That’s basically greed. Buddhists would say that not only does this strengthen the imprint of greed in your mindstream, but the fact that you’re focusing on success in THIS life, means you’re not focusing on dharma and you are not on the path to final liberation.

Let’s apply that to me for a second. This post is a dharma teaching in the sense that I’m explaining Buddhism to all who read this. However it’s not a dharma ACTION unless I write it with a pure motivation. If I write this in order to get a good reputation as a blogger, more sales of a future book, more links to this blog etc., I’m basically writing with a worldly motivation and the karmic result will be worldly. It may indeed help me get all those things, but it won’t contribute to me gaining Nirvana or being able to help all sentient beings escape saṃsāra.

However, if I intended to share insights in Buddhism with you all, so that perhaps greed gets a less powerful hold on a few people, so that they may escape saṃsāra more quickly… if that’s my basic motivation, then my karma may still be to get success in this life, book sales, links, fame, but the effort of writing this post will also contribute to me becoming a full-blown Bodhisattva and Buddha in future lives.

That’s how karma works according to Buddhism. The basic point of Buddhist meditation is to create positive impressions in the mind stream so that we may willingly leave saṃsāra as soon as possible.

The word ‘positive’ here means something different from what it usually does. Positive thoughts in Buddhism aren’t necessarily cheerful thoughts. In fact, a positive thought may be the firm conviction that I’m going to die and I’d better spend as much energy on meditation as possible NOW. Or to put a bit more kindly: positive thoughts are all thoughts that lead to ethical actions. Generosity, patience in the face of anger, self-control when tempted etc.

So how does this link in with The Secret? Well, the karma of all our previous lives has left imprints on our minds. Some of those will become conscious in this life, others will lie dormant. Either way: without cleaning up that karma, changing our experienced reality is impossible. Fortunately, Tibetan Buddhism does have ways of cleaning up karma, even though it’s too much for this post.

For now what matters more is that how we experience reality really is up to us. We can be grateful for the riches we have in this life or resentful for all the things that went wrong. We can see the rain as feeding the corn or as an annoyance. To this extent The Law of Attraction really is almost Buddhism: gratitude figures prominently in both.

Just make sure you don’t feel guilty about NOT feeling grateful – just regret whatever past actions you did that causes you to experience your reality like that. That’s the first step towards purifying that karma. Do you all want to hear all the steps necessary to purify karma or is that too much superstition for you all?

(*) The Chittamatrin (Mind Only School) of Buddhist philosophy basically states that everything we experience is in the nature of consciousness. There is no difference between what we see and our own mind, because it’s all literally the production of our own mind. To the extent that we experience things similarly it’s because we have similar karma. It’s our collective karma for instance that creates this earth. Other Buddhists schools like the Madhyamika agree that karma creates our reality, but that it’s not a one on one relationship. If I were to become enlightened right now, my body won’t suddenly change to include all the marks of a Buddha. That’s because the karma that caused me this body may (theoretically) be cleaned up in this life, but the fruit won’t automatically transform with it.

How desire feeds on itself

Katinka - Spirituality — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 19:35:59 +0000

I almost bought a new laptop this week.

I use my laptop as a desktop, in conjunction with an external screen, mouse and keyboard. The external screen has been turning yellow for weeks now. Very annoying. And since my business is to be online and work with software all day, a yellow screen is more than just an annoyance, it’s detrimental to my work. Buddhists may rightly note though that I’m motivated by aversion here… (one of the three poisons that keep us in Samsara)

Anyhow… I tried a new cable for the screen. I tried a new screen. When that didn’t work the implication could no longer be avoided… It wasn’t the screen, nor the cable… It’s the laptop itself.

That had me really annoyed. I just want to do my thing. Buying a new screen is a simple thing, buying a new laptop is a totally different ball game, not to mention significantly more money.

I just didn’t want to think about it, let alone get myself a new laptop, even if the money itself is not a big deal these days. More aversion.

However, necessity is not something to be denied, so I did two things. One, it had occurred to me that the laptop might simply be overheating, so I checked what internal parts I could easily reach for dust (none) and got myself a laptop cooler.

Despite the fact that it’s tax season, I also went to our local pc shops to find out about the latest laptops and what they could recommend. It turns out that the laptop that fits my needs is lighter than my current laptop, faster, has a bigger hard drive and is stylish as well…

I didn’t buy it of course: I still hadn’t finished my laptop cooling experiment, but I did know which laptop I’d want IF the yellow screen thing returned.

A week later it looks like cooling the laptop does the trick, fortunately.

However, you guessed it, I’m almost sorry. That other laptop was so pretty, so elegant…

Desire feeds on desire.

[post script] I did buy that laptop a week later: even the screen of the laptop itself is now turning yellow when in use long. [/post script]

Guru yoga, freedom of belief, women’s rights, compassion

Katinka - Spirituality — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:28:28 +0000

I’m doing something in this post I haven’t done in a while: share stuff I’ve been inspired by that you may not have seen if you don’t follow me on twitter or facebook. Not that I’m very active on the latter, however my tweets get sent there automatically.

Guru yoga is a rather tough aspect of Tibetan Buddhism for most Westerners to follow. Here’s an explanation from within the tradition that’s as good as any I’ve seen, however it will still probably leave most of you asking yourself: what is this? Part of the problem is that when we hear a Tibetan geshe speak, they’ll say inspiring things, useful things, interesting things, but also things we have trouble with. It’s partly about culture and partly about expectations. Guru yoga is entrenched in Tibetan Buddhism to the extent that some of the teachers literally get incense burned in front of them every time they enter the teaching hall. Sure – it’s about the Dharma they teach, not the person – at least in theory. But in practice it does also mean that disagreeing with the teacher can feel tricky especially for those who take on that teacher as their personal teacher.

When you look at that article, you’ll see that Jetsunma makes sure to stress that when you’re venerating the teacher, you’re actually venerating ALL Bodhisattvas and Buddhas – not merely the one before you. Sure – that makes sense, however it’s clear that this is pretty tough. It’s much easier to just be devoted to that teacher because of their love, wisdom, compassion and charisma. Before scoffing, theosophists should definitely check out the material on Chelas and Disciples I gathered on my Esoteric Studies Guide.

The story about guru yoga that I’ve heard repeated again and again by Geshela Sonam Gyaltsen is when Atisha went to Indonesia to learn Bodhicitta (universal loving kindness) from Dharmarakshita. He was devoted to this teacher despite the fact that he disagreed with the man on no less a subject than the realization of Emptiness (sunyata). Since emptiness and bodhicitta are the two wings of becoming a Buddha, this is not a light thing at all. See also my own post about taking refuge.

Which brings me to my next link: it’s about freedom of belief. I’ve been a champion of freedom of belief for as long as I’ve been active online. It’s not for nothing that my site represents all kinds of spiritual perspectives. However, I’m also enough of a religions scholar to realize that belief is only one half of religion – and in most religions it’s traditionally not that important an aspect at all. Much of the debate on my Judaism quiz centres around this question: how do you define religion? How do you define community? How do you deal with conflicting definitions of what it means to belong? Recent developments in Israel bring this point to the fore even more.

The point made in the article believing in religious freedom by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd is that many religious communities don’t traditionally define themselves as being about ‘belief’ in something or other. Buddhism is one example, traditionally. That’s one reason why the Buddha could say that we should not believe what he said merely because he said it. Buddhism is traditionally more about the sangha (the monks and nuns), studying, giving TO the sangha by lay people, rituals performed by the sangha for the lay people etc. And yes, in rare cases, Buddhism has also been about meditation.

Of course what Buddhism is becoming in the West is a different story… And part of what it’s becoming will be defined by our Western expectations that religion is about what one believes. The whole theosophical project is focused on that too: what one believes and whether what people believe as Christianity (for instance) is really what Jesus meant… It’s a very modern way of looking at things.

And that way of looking at things makes it easier to feel sorry for persecuted Christians in Syria than for the Syrian population as a whole which is rising up against a dictatorship. The point? When we focus on Christian’s being persecuted we’re really saying: Christians being persecuted is more important than the whole population being persecuted. And in saying that, we’re strengthening the differences between Christians and Muslims in Syria and by doing so contribute to the persecution of Christians in Syria. By telling the story that way, we’re also supporting a dictatorship. See the article for more.

Then again – the Arab spring is turning out to be a landmark in women’s rights as well. As Egypt reinvents itself, women are threatened with losing rights they already had, because fundamentalist Muslims (also a very modern phenomena btw) want to be ‘non-western’. Let’s hope the women who fought besides their brothers for regime change will continue to stake their claim to freedom.

Perhaps freedom of belief is not as essential as practicing compassion. Karen Armstrong with her Charter for Compassion project certainly believes so. The site has inspiring stories to share.

Last but not least and totally unrelated, I found this story about how patients are helped in dealing with chronic disease by getting a mentor inspiring.

The 3 basics of the path: ethics, concentration and wisdom

Katinka - Spirituality — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:06:25 +0000

Buddhists are good at lists. Tibetan Buddhists, the Gelugpa school perhaps especially, have made them into a sort of art form. The Lam Rim is a long list of lists, in fact.

In my daily meditations I’m working with Thubten Chodron’s Guided meditations on the Stages of the Path. She has divided the Lam Rim up into handy daily meditations. This morning I meditated on the three basics on the path – meditation E5 ‘Paths that cease disturbing attitudes’ if you care to look it up.

Anyhow, I thought they might make a good talking point on this blog. It’s been a while since I’ve blogged here, after all.

In Buddhism ethics always comes first. After all: there is no chance of getting out of the rounds of rebirth if you don’t at least stop harming other beings as much as possible. In Buddhism ethics is a long list of don’ts. What you might call positive ethics comes in as metta or bodhicitta depending on your tradition. Since Buddhism is a contemplative tradition first, loving kindness takes a back seat to making sure you don’t harm others through things like ill will, murder, stealing, slander etc. This makes sense: how can you really help anybody if you’re still hurting people actively? Next comes calming the mind through even more ethical discipline: getting over greed, avoiding gossip and idle talk etc. (*)

Once the grossest forms of these are no longer part of our mindstream, we can go on to trying to train concentration and developing wisdom. Lay people are also encouraged to develop devotion and generosity, but that’s not part of this particular list.

We train concentration by focusing on one particular object, say an image of Jesus or Buddha, visualizing that very clearly and holding it in the mind for as long a time as you can manage. At first that’s usually no longer than a few moments at a time, if you’re able to visualize at all. If you can’t – that’s ok too. One of my lay Buddhist teachers shared that she could not visualize at all. Instead she just recited the description of the practice (whatever it was at that point) in her head. The main criterion of success is feeling the Buddha, or whatever it is you’re visualizing, is really there.

Wisdom is defined a bit more specifically than you’d think if you merely heard the word. In a Mahayana Buddhist context it usually refers to the realization of Emptiness. Again – that doesn’t mean what you may think it does. If you’re ready for some deep philosophical speculation, do check out my section on Buddhist Philosophy and Emptiness on my site.

For now I will summarize emptiness as the realization that your personality is an illusion – that is: it’s not a fixed entity, it changes and it’s the main source of your problems (and mine, obviously). Or again in other words: grasping at the self is the main source of our problems: it magnifies every issue we may be facing in our lives. This can manifest as selfishness, but also as being overbearing. Self-grasping can be in our lives as pride or lack of self confidence and more. Self grasping is at the root of all our problems, according to Buddhism, but the realization that this is so is quite tough. It’s the realization of Emptiness and the ultimate wisdom. Realizing this emptiness (of inherent existence of the personality) is what it means to be an Arhat, or that’s how I understand it right now.

Note that the term ‘realization’ means a PERMANENT realization, not merely having a feel for how the personality fools itself, not merely having an intellectual understanding – that’s a nice start, but an Arhat doesn’t have a grasping self at all anymore. He or she will not get defensive when hurt, won’t get a feel of ‘oh me’ when losing family etc.

As Thubten Chodron teaches it here, wisdom includes another basic Buddhist concept: belief in Karma. In other wisdom teachings I’ve read it is stressed that we should only study emptiness to the point where we can still believe in karma. If our study of Buddhist philosophy makes us doubt karma, we should go back a bit.

So there you have it: the three basic ingredients of the Buddhist path to liberation are ethics, concentration and wisdom. What do you think?

(*) Note that this list is in the Lam Rim as a practice in common with the second level of practitioner. It doesn’t include Bodhicitta because that’s left for the highest scope. In the Middle Scope we DO realize we want out of saṃsāra, out of the rounds of rebirth, but we don’t yet realize we want to take all sentient beings with us.

Ritual, Andrew Cohen on spiritual evolution, rejoicing and more

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:32:40 +0000

This is an overview of spiritual material I put online in the past month or so.
All Considering:

Great Spiritual Books, my reviews:

Andrew Cohen, Evolutionary Enlightenment: a new path to spiritual awakening (2)

Contemporary Buddhism

I could not become a Buddhist without still having some controversial opinions about the topic occasionally… my main spiritual blog will remain ‘All Considering’, but when I have something to say about Buddhism that doesn’t fit that general spiritual audience, I will say it here. I started out by writing down my notes on daily refuge: how to take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha without losing a universal perspective. So far it’s not very controversial, but that may change.

Ritual as part of a spiritual practice: Tibetan Buddhism

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:58:58 +0000

Over the past year I’ve gained some experience at (Gelugpa Tibetan) Buddhist ritual. As a born agnostic from a protestant background rituals don’t sit very well with me. In fact, before hand I was planning to select the Buddhist lineage in part on the amount of ritual it involved.

Funnily enough I ended up with one of the lineages of Buddhism that has exported it’s rituals wholesale to the West, along with it’s texts and meditation practices. That is: prayers, prostrations, ritual offerings, etc. play a huge part in the practice of FPMT members and retreats. We should not make too much of this: members are free to ‘take home’ none or a lot of ritual trappings.

The upside is that studying texts is as much a part of their practice as ritual is, and meditation also plays a huge part. Since I am suited to studying and am trying to incorporate meditation into my life, I guess it’s 2 out of 3 for me.

My realistic side tells me I can’t expect the world to just supply me with a tradition that suits me precisely.

That said, I have started realizing that ritual really does have a part to play in spiritual practice, even my own.

From the perspective of the anthropology of religion ritual is an essential part of all religion. The Protestant Sunday Service is as much a ritual as the Catholic devotion to Mary. Personal meditation practices are rituals as much as saying “hail mary’s”. In fact, soccer matches and presidential elections also have ritualistic (even religious) aspects to them, if you look at them from a anthropological perspective.

What ritual does, in our individual spiritual practice, is integrate our ideals into our emotional lives. I find I like singing (Buddhist) prayers to go along with my morning meditation. It lifts me up. Don’t get me wrong: visualizing Buddha (my primary practice is based on that) is a joyful experience in itself, most of the time, but there is something peaceful about voicing one’s devotion in chant.

There, I said it: devotion. I’ve wanted to write about devotion for months now. I still don’t feel quite qualified to do so, but it’s one of those things that Western culture (especially Dutch culture) is most suspicious about. Yet devotion works.

Devotion works- that’s a very utilitarian way of looking at the sacred of course, but it does express my experience of devotion very well.
The thing is: devotion is taking an emotional risk. Devotion to a spouse means that they’re capable of hurting you, but the other side of the coin is that love is impossible without devotion.

In my daily meditation practice I visualize (and try to feel) devotion to the Buddha. Buddha is pretty safe: since he’s there through my visualization, he won’t be hurting me, he can’t run away like a man can, he’s merely there as an extension of my ideals – though of course I hope he’s also a reflection of the universal Buddha Nature as well as ‘my’ Buddha nature.

The thing is: as far as the experience goes it’s not really relevant whether he’s ‘really’ there. As Dumbledore says to Harry Potter in ‘The Deathly Hallows’: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?”

But the question then becomes: how do we define real?

I think in our culture at this juncture we’re collectively trying to find rituals that fit your changed social and spiritual realities.

Someone mailed me this week with the question of how to dispose of a pack of tarot cards that that the dog had chewed on. I told her that in Tibetan Buddhism Dharma texts are disposed of by burning them and saying prayers over them. I advised her to translate that into burning the tarot cards and saying whatever prayer or chant she thought applicable.

Rituals don’t have to be an expression of an oppressive authoritarian religious structure, they can be taken on in our personal lives to express respect, devotion, moving on and whatever occasion we feel needs ritual to mark it.

Giving yourself permission to rejoice in what’s good…

Katinka - Spirituality — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 13:39:08 +0000

In the Discovering Buddhism program it’s often repeated that we should regret our bad actions, words and thoughts, but that we can also rejoice in what’s good.

Rejoicing is not a part of our Western Culture, especially Dutch culture. The Dutch are very good at complaining, my mom even suspects that this is one of the reasons why the Dutch are so happy: they get the negative out of their system.

However that may be, it is a bit weird that it’s so easier to focus on what’s bad, than on what’s good. I’m sure that’s partly because the good doesn’t need fixing, so why spend energy on it?

On the other hand: one sure way of ruining relationships is to focus only on the bad. A naughty child will usually do a chore as well as a ‘good’ child and in being productive they will feel good about themselves and behave (usually only a bit) better in class. A child that thinks that it can only do things wrong will never try and rectify the situation or try and please the teacher or parent.

From a karmic perspective rejoicing really is the opposite of miserliness. If we’re able to rejoice in the good that someone like Oprah Winfrey does, we won’t have as much energy left over to envy her. It’s pretty obvious that it’s a better use of our energy to do the first than the second.

In fact, rejoicing is said to be the lazy man’s route to good karma: you don’t have to meditate all day to get merit, you can just rejoice in someone else’s meditation practice. You don’t have to give to charity yourself, you can just rejoice in how well other people are doing.

You’ll find though that this is not easy: rejoicing in something someone else is doing well that you might have done is very hard. Instead you’ll find yourself resenting that person, which is your psychological defense mechanism against feeling guilty that you’re NOT doing that.

In that sense it’s much easier to just rejoice in Oprah’s good works and good intentions: she does things with her money most of us simply aren’t able to do. We don’t have her wealth, nor her connections, so we don’t have to feel guilty for not joining in.

Still, even in that case it’s apparently not self-evident that we rejoice. When I was in the Chicago area a few years ago I was told that in fact many people did NOT like Oprah or admire her. Perhaps it had something to do with people realizing the folly of making a show like hers: I met some people who knew people who’d been on it. They’d shared just how puffed up everything was, how they’d been forced to tell their story in a way that was out of proportion to how it really was.

Partly that’s simply how the media work: they tell a story and when any of us make the headlines we become part of the story they wish to tell. It’s only the really PR savvy celebrity who manages to make sure the media tell those aspects of the story that they WANT to have told. And even in that case it’s about making sure it’s a story that the media CAN tell their audience. I think the Dalai Lama succeeds pretty well at that, for instance.

Let us rejoice at that!

Similarly in Tibetan Buddhism we have permission to rejoice in the things we do well. Did you just give some money to charity? Good – rejoice! You don’t have to be proud, you don’t have to puff yourself up thinking you’re so great, but you don’t have to pull yourself down either. Just rejoice in having done something positive.

Though this post is not written on Christmas Day I’m publishing it on that day, for the few of you who aren’t spending this day with family.

Perhaps because it is Christmas Day we can share things we rejoice at. It can be personal things, or people we admire, or things in our lives we’re thankful for…

Merry Christmas & overview of 2011

Katinka - Spirituality — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:44:27 +0000

2011 was a crucial year for me. My blog reached over 400 subscribers for a bit (now back at 390, still respectable obviously), I learned meditation, quit meditating and went back to meditating daily, I turned Buddhist officially, quit the Theosophical Society, had a serious back problem and recovered, dealt with nose issues that are getting better as well and enjoyed the fact that I can actually live and save on my online income. Due to my health problems I did NOT actually go to India, unfortunately. However, I do feel I learned quite a lot staying in The Netherlands. In fact I’d say this year was adventurous enough on many levels if not on the physical plane.

When you look at my best read posts of the year, you’ll mostly find posts from earlier years. The numbers after the year is the amount of visitors that post had according to my stats:

2012 promises to be a more down to earth year for me: I’m set to try and integrate what I learned in the Gelugpa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism into my own life, trying to continue my meditation practice and generally take it easy. I started a pottery class (yes, that bowl was my first finished product), something I really enjoy doing. I will be going back to university for a class or two, purely on a recreational basis. I have two lectures planned this spring: the one I’m most excited about giving is about health and spiritual transformation.

For the world in general 2012 is of course set to be a pivotal year if Maya prophecies are to be believed. Personally I think the world will not come to an end, but the Euro will probably continue to fall, the world wide economy looks like it’s in serious trouble and if the Euro does NOT survive I guess the environment may be the only (short-term) win.

Back to this blog: the 10 most popular posts written in 2011 were:

What they don’t tell you about meditation
The unsaid basics of meditation and life
Jiddu Krishnamurti as a man of his time
Best Buddhist Blogs
On how to stay celibate (which nobody felt brave enough to share on facebook btw)
Free will and karma
Is there something wrong with boredom, during meditation?
Sticking to one spiritual path, vs New Age shopping…
Channeling: real, unreal? Divine, human?
What we say, do, think and feel – why action matters

Themes I’m considering writing about in the new year include: 1) There is a considerable difference in the way I’ve always interpreted Blavatsky’s version of Karma and the standard Buddhist interpretation; 2) reincarnation vs rebirth and 3) questions about the soul and consciousness. I’ll also continue writing about whatever topics relevant to the spiritual path that seem worthwhile to me.

If you’ve read this far I do have one question: any topic suggestions? Anything you want to ask me, anything you think I SHOULD be writing about?

Oh, and expect the look of this blog to be updated within the next few weeks

All Considering

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